Elizabeth Sewell

David Schenck

Taking its bearings from the Greek myth of Orpheus, whose singing had the power to move the rocks and trees and to quiet the animals, Elizabeth Sewell’s The Orphic Voice transforms our understanding of the relationship between mind and nature. Myth, Sewell argues, is not mere fable but an ancient and vital form of reflection that unites poetry, philosophy, and natural science: Shakespeare with Francis Bacon and Giambattista Vico; Wordsworth and Rilke with Michael Polanyi. All these members of the Orphic company share a common perception that “discovery, in science and poetry, is a mythological situation in which the mind unites with a figure of its own devising as a means toward understanding the world.” Sewell’s visionary book, first published in 1960, presents brilliantly illuminating readings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, among other masterpieces, while deepening our understanding not only of poetry and the history of ideas but of the biological reach of the mind.

Poetry and Natural History

The Orphic Voice

The Field of Nonsense

Reproduction of the original: Amy Herbert by Elizabeth Sewell

Amy Herbert

poetry and natural history

The Orphic Voice 

Abigail Goodrich Whittelsey

Darius Mead

Maria C. Tracy

The Mother's Magazine and Family Circle

The Singular Hope

Eliza Crosby Allen

Ira M. Allen

Myron Finch

Mary G. Clarke

Carolina Orme Hiscox

The Mothers' Journal and Family Visitant

A Glimpse of the World

Elizabeth Sewell

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